Falling With Exquisite Grace
by Systemic Anomaly
Summary: The things we fear have the power to free us: those in the clothes of an enemy, often those who touch us. Post war, when the peace is merely a ceasefire bought and paid for in blood, Neo's battle is an uphill one. Slash warning: and not what you'd expect.
1. The Fight Against Peace

**Title: Falling With Exquisite Grace**

**Author: Well, duh.**

**Rating: Old enough to know better, discreet enough to not quite be pr0n.**

**Pairing: I HATE this category. But shockingly, this one is a "Neo/Merv" story.**

**Warnings: If you are squicked by slash, gay relations, or anything of the sort, hit that little red "X" button right about now. There's a _lot_ of that in here.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Matrix _movies,_ or any of the _people_ involved. There's a fine line there, but I'll get into that a little later.**

**A/N: Okay. First off: most of this is a true story. Believe what you will, but in case you think I've gone competely off my rocker, here: w-w-w, truthofthespoon dot net. That should explain a lot.**

**Assuming you're either back _with_ me here or haven't left the page, I also would like to dedicate this story to someone _very_ important to me. It isn't rocket science here, people. laughs. I told them I'd write something down for them... and instead of the enlightening drabble I'd envisioned, I got this, written in ONE marathon _twelve-hour session._ Whoo. So here it is. My manifesto, as fanfiction. Enjoy.**

**Oh, and that single line, _"Here comes the war machine"?_ That's from a Bush song. It's called -drumroll- "Warm Machine". Not mine, sadly.**

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**Chapter One: The Fight Against Peace**

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War brings out the best and worst in people – it is a fact of nature, a universal truth. Only in moments most extreme do the majority of beings ever really touch the center of themselves: unpleasant or altruistic, afraid or standing without fear before the maelstrom.

But to those who _live_ the reality of war, the constant struggle between safety and freedom, to those who are not defined by anything as lofty as "pure ideal" discussed and sketched out and pointed at across a boardroom table… to those to whom war is an empty chair where someone they loved once ate and laughed and wept, a scar that will never entirely heal, a tattered mess of blood and sinew and bone, scorched fields and blackened skies… to those who are haunted every waking moment by the ghosts that lurk just out of reach – always seeing, never quite _seen_, and never exorcised: the unconscious knows the truth the mind rejects, that forgetting equals death, and one must never forget – and the ghost of what is yet to _come_… to those who are standing on the front lines at any given second, juggling peace and freedom like razored flaming knives that might drop at a moment's inattention… to those who know the bone-deep difference between peace and a temporary cease-fire paid for in blood…

To those people, this struggle creates endless shades of gray.

Where once was an enemy: now simply another sentient being, struggling to exist, to survive, to be free; where once was a knowledge of right and wrong, now the real understanding that circumstances dictate pain; fear spawns hatred, hatred spawns death, and death brings nothing if not more hatred. A cycle, forever unending.

Until now.

Where once was an impassible wall; now, perhaps, a door.

If one can keep up the dance.

Worlds within worlds; a perfect microcosm of civilization. He muses, Neo does, in the shadows of the corner where he lurks, that if the world at large – Zion, perhaps, which to his mind has become increasingly uncomfortable, these last days, simply another system of control bound and constrained by the legends of hatred, the tales passed down of "evil machines" from generation to generation, the stories of how the poor oppressed humans had vanquished their oppressors with the help of the One… a mindset poised forever on the brink of another war because it did not know how to _learn_ from the first – or even the entirety of the Matrix, could see the melting pot of beings that stood, drank, danced, and laughed in this room… if they could see that, they might wake up to a truth more important than that gained by a red pill and a half a glass of tepid tapwater.

If only they could see.

Here, knowledge may be power, but the real power was in rising above the knowledge that you _had_ knowledge… he curls his lip at the confused complexity of that thought. _Look, I'm esoteric._

A party, then: or what a party dreamt of being in its more ambitious moments. Everyone present chosen for a very specific reason, brought by invitation only, gathered in this, this neutral expanse. Human -- rarely – or program, Exile, part of the System or beyond it, it really didn't matter now. And Neo sometimes thought that he had learned more about human nature from his efforts here, now, _after_ the war, than he'd ever learned during or before it: the intricate mechanics of life.

_Here comes the war machine._

But it was harder, really, to maintain peace than to fight for it: when people believe that their lives, their _way_ of life, is threatened, they will do anything to protect it. They will sacrifice that which they thought they knew; they will stand before things that inspire fear in the most steady hands; and they will, perhaps, even listen to one man, reaching out to both sides in an effort to bring a halt to the needless death, the wailing mothers, the crumpled, skinny not-quite-teenagers with the scars and the haunted eyes and plugs still shining wetly through a dark fuzz of new hair.

But let them think they've _won…_ well, that's another story.

What he had found is that people will often fight to protect victory, as fervently as peace.

And so he tries: tries to tell them, even one at a time, that the peace will hold only as long as they care to _hold_ it; that if they cannot see the wrong in both sides they are simply _perpetuating_ the wrong. That not fighting because the other side's not fighting – even though you _would, _oh yes, those sons of bitches killed my whole family, my son was on his first crew assignment on that ship and those bastards slaughtered him, ever leave me alone with an EMP and a field of them I'd take out every last one – is an exercise in futility.

That the hatred, the fear, is what began this all in the first place.

Most of them think he's gone around the bend: that his journey to the Machine City, the injuries that laid him down for two months after Kid and the _Hammer_ and an abundance of faith had brought him back to them, have addled him into "sympathy for the enemy".

_Well, they did keep him alive,_ they say. _Maintained him on some… who the hell knows, some system of wires or tubes or something – those bastards, we pulled him out once and after everything he did for them, they have the sack to hook him up again like a fucking piece of meat -- _and_ so he probably feels like he owes 'em. _

Sympathy for the Machines? The idea that the Matrix _isn't_ a system of control meant to oppress, but in actuality perhaps even a _mercy, _something to allow the vanquished carbon-based beings a comfortable dream-world that contained all their history, all that which was familiar, their hopes and dreams and loves and pains and fantasies, the green of a grass at the edge of a child's Slip'N Slide, the orange-red-gold explosion of dawn, cool water on a summer's day and the feeling of the arms of someone who loves you… instead of nothing but an empty blackness, tubes and wires and a choking thick syrupy mass clogging eyes and nose and chest, forever awake and aware and unable to scream in a horrible nightmare stasis? A _mercy? _That the humans themselves would never even have _thought_ to offer, had the victory been the other way around?

How dare he even suggest it.

The Machines are evil. Humans are oppressed. Black and white, and if in a hundred years – or a hundred days, as Neo secretly thinks, terrifyingly, is much more likely – the war begins again because no knowledge is passed down but this hatred… well, then, they'll fight again, won't they?

Sometimes Neo almost despairs.

He has had better luck with the Exiles.

In six iterations, there has never been a human with the idea that destroying the Matrix is not the solution to the conflict: this, he has been told. But why destroy the System? In the part of his brain that is part Machine – and, perhaps, always has been – he simply cannot comprehend this. Yeah, sure… the Matrix has "enslaved" humans for generations: even in his mind, he hears the quote marks around the word. But if there is real peace, then those who choose to leave the System can _do_ so: there is no slavery, no constraint, no bondage there. And for those who don't… well, who could honestly blame them? Some people are content with their lives, digital or not – they like their hot baths, their football games, chasing after their children in the backyard. Taking that away from them because you think it is your duty to "free" them whether they are ready or not is, as far as Neo is concerned, just another form – and a worse one than the Matrix could ever be – of slavery. It's like believing that the world is a place of horror and sin, and that the biggest favor you could do someone is to "purify" them… by killing them. No choice, no questions. Thanks, we're doing you a favor. Be sure to be grateful.

_Grateful. _Neo's hand tightens convulsively around the slender red glass he holds.

And until the sky is cleared, the Machines need the fields to survive. As simple and uncomplicated as that. There are no ulterior motives, no glorifying in oppression – something else he has come to learn, that that kind of hatred, that self-righteous pleasure in another's suffering, is a uniquely human trait – it is a simple desire _to be allowed to exist._ Humans fought for that right; they died for it. For millennia, since the beginning of time. Any sentient being deserves that freedom. Create a child; the choice of whether that child lives or dies is taken out of your hands the moment the essence of whatever divine you believe in breathes life into the spark. Children are not objects; they are living beings, fragments of the cosmic. Humans may have created the first Machines… but that has never given them the right to take that life away because they think they can.

Because they're afraid.

_If they're so desperately afraid of the Matrix,_ Neo thinks, and not for the first – or the hundredth – time, _why don't they simply work _with_ the Machines, to clear the sky? They were the ones responsible for that destruction, after all. Clear the sky, give them back their freedom – does Zion think the Machines _want_ to be bound to the human race? It's an unwilling symbiosis on both parts, after all – give them back their power source, and let both races live their own way, if not in harmony, then at least in peace._

It is an idea he has been trying to fight for for months.

Here, _in_ the Matrix, he has at least begun to move ahead, in tiny, tiny steps.

A human, the Sixth Anomaly, coming forward to speak of peace, of moving beyond old hatreds, old prejudices. Speaking from a connection with the Source, speaking of free will and a desire to end the death, the destruction. The endless cycle of helpless iteration. Trap a program in a loop, and it will repeat itself until the end of the world. Until the program is interrupted – or rebooted – or until the parameters are changed.

A systemic anomaly; a glitch in the System.

A departure from the cycle.

At first, most of those with power on the Machine side had simply dismissed him as a lunatic: _What can he do?_ But he persisted. While Zion whispered behind his back about his sympathetic leanings, while those for whom peace was not a profitable prospect spoke in firewalled rooms, built code bombs in basements with the sole purpose of shutting him up forever. Even now, standing here, the hand that he is flexing around the tall thin glass – and he doesn't drink, but here all rules seem to be suspended – is scorched from the third knuckle down the back of his hand: it's an ugly, badly-healing wound, and bending the reality of the Construct aside, there were _always_ new weapons.

If peace doesn't make a passable profit, there's always death.

Finding out that there are no sides makes trying to establish alliances surprisingly difficult: he didn't want to create a little stronghold, to play the never-ending chess game of power and influence to buy the human race – and, by association, the Machine empire – just a little more time. He wanted a real, honest _audience_ for the idea of true peace: he wanted, _needed_, to build that Bridge.

He wanted them to understand that they were all one race, in the end.

When you really came down to it.

So, after endless nights walking the rain-damp streets with the high collar of his coat turned up against a digital wind, after battles both physical and emotional with those from _all_ sides who would rather hate than understand, rather kill than reach out to… after tiny steps – where he once put the word out in the same chat rooms he'd once practically lived in, L337 hackers and teenage wannabes, 'ware for hire and the same places Trinity had eventually found him, now he put out a different message entirely; after lurking in the places where the influential lurked as well, after offering up his own sacrifices, his own demonstrations of honesty and dedication to the ideal – he'd at last been illuminated with a course of action. And once he'd initiated it, he'd had to laugh long and hard at himself: both for doing it at all, and for taking so goddamn long to figure it out. In the end, he'd done what generations in the Matrix had done before him, when they had something significant to offer, to ask, to put on the game table when last bets were called.

He'd gone to the Merovingian.

And now here he was, half-hidden in shadow in one of the chateau's more spacious social rooms: lurking quietly, thinking, and waiting for it to be time to begin again: the talk, the understanding, the planning. Watching as programs, beings, intermingled half-drunkenly or full-on smashed – although the Merv had a facial expression he reserved particularly for those who became drooling intoxicated idiots in public in his House, and Neo, biting his tongue because it wasn't his place to criticize his host's moral demonstrations, had occasionally seen these same guests finding upon their next visit that the coded wine, or whiskey, or what have you, did not at all agree with them – and watching their interactions. Learning. Always aware even at the deepest level of his mind that these were _people,_ people who laughed and loved and _had the right to live and exist and be free._

"_I just have never..."_

" _...heard a program speak of love?"_

"_It's a... human emotion."_

"_No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies. I see that you are in love. Can you tell me what you would give to hold on to that connection?"_

"_Anything."_

"_Then perhaps the reason you're here is not so different from the reason I'm here." _

And again, over and over, Neo had found that the thought most people found it easy to scoff at was true: preconceptions meant nothing. There were those who thought the Merovingian was the reptile of the Machine world, cold-blooded, without reason or compassion; Neo, having reasons that drove more insistently than self, dug deeper. Instinctively knowing that this might be his path to a middle ground; to peace. Because even now, there were those that would not listen to him, Neo, simply because the majority of the shell he currently resided in was, still, human. Regardless of the wires and plates, regardless of the cameras wired to new holes in his skull, the 'gift' of the Council of Zion when sight would have been the last thing he'd've asked for. Just as the humans were not without their prejudices, their pre-ordained hatred, there were those among the Machine empire and the Exiles who had nothing but contempt for these, their original jailers. Meat bags with half a conscience; slaves to biology.

"_Nothing this weak is meant to survive."_

But in the Merovingian's characteristic self-interest there were the seeds of the beginnings of peace: odd, that, to hear spoken aloud, but no less true. Like a jeweler bent over his worktable – every inch of said table exquisitely crafted and shaped by the touch of his own particular hand – turning a precious rare gem over and over before his scrutinizing, magnified eye, the Merv had examined the ideas Neo had offered him, seen the younger man's sincerity, and paused to consider.

_Not just lip service to peace. Not a pause in the war, not this ridiculous 'cease-fire'… like they're all somehow just holding their breath, children playing Freeze Tag in the school yard. Tag, you're frozen, with your guns and your bombs and your EMPs, with your upraised weapons and your smoking rubble. Changing the entire _mindset._ We're talking massive upheaval here, an entire paradigm shift, and it's a dangerous game to play – dance too far in the wrong direction and you dance straight into the firing line. Or fall, and everything falls with you. _Because of_ you. But even though whispering in someone's ear never woke them out of a coma, sometimes a whisper is all it takes. To start a revolution. And that's what we want, really, isn't it? A revolution of thought. A revolution of _mind._ To shake up these centuries-old preconceptions about the evil of each other's race and be able to – metaphorically, at least – step up, shake hands, and be allowed to live as we choose? And, shit, maybe even _together?

Neo's own ability to express these ideas, these plans, surprised and scared him, a little: throughout his entire existence after that single moment in which he'd made his choice and swallowed the pill, he'd never been the leader. That had been Morpheus: Morpheus, who could rally an army to exultation with a few well-chosen words. Morpheus, who could inspire the most die-hard skeptics to belief against their most passionate refusals; Morpheus who had taught him the first real truths he'd ever learned, who had released him to discover the Purpose that had led him here, who had been the father he'd never had in every clichéd sense that there was, Morpheus who had schooled him and led him and molded the warrior he had become.

Morpheus, who had died with the same black and white truths that he had lived with; died before Neo could give back the gift of understanding that the Source had touched off in his soul.

Died, before Neo could tell him that it _wasn't_ about control, after all, and look: we _can_ make peace. We really can.

_"That is our karma."_

_"You believe in karma?"_

_"Karma is a word. Like "love". A way of saying 'what I am here to do.' I do not resent my karma - I'm grateful for it. Grateful for my wonderful wife, for my beautiful daughter. They are gifts. And so I do what I must do to honor them."_

And so Neo – out of love, out of faith, out of Purpose or design, who's to know? – became the strategist, the median, the unbroken white center of the revolution. He became that leader: speaking to the shadowed groups in Zion, beneath the overhang of the nightly marketplace, in the corners of the docks as the morning cage-crews came on duty prepared for a day of grit and grime and grease. He spoke to those both inside and out of the Construct, the Matrix: he created places where those who were interested in hearing his unbiased truth might be able to… and sometimes it took all of his not-so-refined cunning and resources to create these places safely. After all, peace is not in some people's best interests. Back to the chat rooms, the message boards, the warehouses where the ship crews once scrambled for exits and met in secret to hide from the Agents of the System. Near the end of one memorable back-alley meeting, one of his own people, a new recruit – what Trinity had always referred to as a 'baby redpill' -- had even taken a careless, passionately spiteful shot at him: because he welcomed the Agents, the Exiles.

They thought he had betrayed them.

He knew better, even if they didn't; but his activities inside the Matrix once again took on that air of distant danger, smoke rising always over just the next horizon. Uncertainty. This was something that refusing bullets couldn't stop; he could rock back on his right ankle and flex a knee and rise above it, but he could never really _escape_ it. Because hatred might not fly with you… but it's always waiting on the ground.

And there are always new weapons in the fight against peace.


	2. Building the Bridge

**Chapter Two: Building the Bridge**

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Neo had become a leader, yes; but he had also become an emissary.

He found himself now called for by those who had heard of his message of _Peaceful co-existence_ and _Not destroying the Matrix_ and _Understanding that all sentient beings have the right to survive_, found himself more often than not fulfilling more of the role of 'the One' than he ever had in Zion. A figurehead; a symbol. Someone to be seen amongst those of the Machine empire, the Zion crews, the underground network of Exiles who never spoke of one another, but knew every other fringe program and being on an intimate level: survival makes you brothers. Always socially awkward at the best of times, he found himself both thrust into Thomas Anderson's worst nightmare and playing upon every ounce of Thomas Anderson's former dubious innocent charm. Trinity had told him once that the Matrix could not tell him who he was, but he disagreed with that, as well. To an extent. Because old habits _did_ die hard, no matter what the books said, and when your every word and movement is being scrutinized by a dozen sentient beings – looking for the weakness, looking for the loophole, looking for the _lie_ – and the success or failure of your very ultimate Purpose depends on the cant of an eyebrow, the sincerity of your tone… it was good to remember those little nuances, the body language that put people at ease, the slightly bewildered smile that turned your intentions transparent and put suspicions to rest… even if all of this was done on the deepest subconscious level.

It was good to have a buried memory of dodging drunken men at a nightclub, or knowing how to politely refuse an advance, of knowing who was watching the movement of your hips not with admiration of your grace but with a suppressed desire to hurt, to subjugate. Good to know how far was too far, in sacrifice.

Good to remember how to play the game.

And the fact that he _was_ the One didn't hurt, in any case: the glitch, the Sixth Anomaly who, rather than simply fulfilling blind pre-destination and rebooting the program, had instead chosen destruction for _neither_ side… and had the passion and the power to maintain that choice. To stand by it.

In essence of metaphor, Neo had begun to build that Bridge with his flesh.

And so he had found himself here: buried in the mass of people drinking alcohol manipulated by a few lines of clever code here and there – a tiny hallucination, just to spice things up, a taste more appealing than straight whiskey or with a bite more potent than wine – or drinking coffee; a heavy-bass thrum of music lying over the semi-darkened room like a living, throbbing shroud. He had wanted to speak to the Merovingian about the underground network he, Neo, had begun to set up – if anyone could tell him where the weak points were, it would be the Frenchman, with his innate grasp of point and counterpoint. The Merv, for his part, had wanted to ask something of Neo, a safe point for some of his people. So again, the dance: begun.

"_Come, tomorrow night. There will be… some people: a little wine, a little music. A safe place to have a chat. Only the upper echelon, you understand: don't bring any of those idiotic children with their snap-holsters and their prejudices. It would be disgraceful, to say the least, in dynamics we always must be aware of whom has the power at any given moment, and who _wants_ it. Only you, Neo, come alone and we'll talk. Consider this a private invitation. You are… privileged."_

And here he was.

The steady rumble of the music was nothing less than hypnotic, threatening a sort of forced calm; almost absently, Neo found himself wondering if that was on purpose, too. He wouldn't put it past the Merv, who always seemed to have everything… under control.

Like now: there. In the corner of the room, moving through the throng of people like a blood-scenting shark through the rotted pilings of a pier: no motion wasted, just the right tilt of the head, the right word. A soft amused chuckle drifting to Neo over the music and conversation. The Merovingian had appeared there, like smoke, like a holographic projection turned on and off at whim: and, yes, there was a turning head, a nod. Some of them, at least, had now had their attention drawn to the presence of the One.

_The Anomaly? Here? Oh, yes. It's true, really, it is. Over there. No, just to the left of the bust, there, that shadow isn't a shadow; it's the collar of his coat. No, I'm not worried… no need. Yes, I heard that he is working with the Merovingian… only benefits for us all, hmm? No, I don't know why. But the word is that he wants to keep the Matrix intact. Running. I know! A human, defending the Matrix. But that's what I hear. No, I don't know. Yes, he _is_ young, isn't he? I haven't seen any trouble so far, but keep your eyes open: after all, I've heard that Agents have been deleted because of him. Looks cocky? I don't know. Yes, that's him. In the corner there. Maybe we should stick around, see what we can find out… it might be wise to find out where the power really lies. Maybe even to join in with this, if it suits us…_

And Neo nods, carefully, subtly, acknowledging their acknowledgement. This is a part of the game he will never get used to.

He flexes the hand again: the tall glass is congealing with thin liquid that he's long since forgotten about. He doesn't drink, doesn't even partake in any of the Zion ritual beverages except on _very_ rare occasions, and now finds himself in a situation that would have made Trinity either raise her eyebrows or throw up both hands in amused, frustrated resignation: what to _do_ with the damn thing? For all he knew, the stuff was spiked with a code that'd explode if he tried to toss it into a potted plant, or something. An insult to Merv's generosity. Or whatever. He doesn't want to put it down – and, really, there's nowhere _to_ put it down, in this massive, moving crowd – and he needs to make sure he keeps all his faculties intact: this is business, after all. Of the most important kind.

And he can't just keep _holding_ the damn thing forever.

Lifting it between his fingers, his eyes only half-scanning the crowd, his vision picks up a single, subtle movement at the corner of his eye. The turn of a sleek, dark head. And suddenly, without needing to know how he knows, he is excruciatingly aware that all of the Merovingian's fabled attention is now – however temporarily – entirely fixated on him.

The older man nods once.

Barely.

The slightest incline of his jaw.

No one else even notices.

Neo pauses for the barest fraction of a second… and then in one raise-and-flex fluid motion, he re-directs the intention of his elbow and tosses back the entire contents of the glass.

_Hell with it._

As he lowers the glass from his lips there is already someone there to take it out of his hand: efficient service, the Merv calls it, often with a sneer. Neo registers this, as he registers all other sensory input, simply as data to be filed, an unimportant detail that is already lost as he steps away from his place in the corner, moving through the dark moist crowd and toward the rear door of this massive room. The wine, or whatever it was, is a distant burning in his throat, his chest, somewhere around his hips; it will pass off after a while, and until then he will simply have to deal with it. Why not? It is a party, after all.

A party. Neo could almost laugh.

They used to party before executions, too. In the old days.

He nods to those he passes, but for the most part they simply part to _let_ him pass: whether this is part of his image as the One or simple courtesy, it comes to the same end result… his booted foot on the bottom step of the rising marble staircase, one hand cool on the smooth stone. He'd fought here, once, filled to the brim with confidence and cocky splendor, as yet oblivious of the real truth. Fought just as much to show off as to survive… he could have simply followed Morpheus and Trinity, grabbed the two of them and the Keymaker and taken off with one deliberate motion. But he had been trying to make an impression… he didn't think he'd been doing it _consciously,_ but in the end, did it matter?

"_Mark my words, boy. I have survived your predecessors; I will survive you."_

Several months after Neo had first come forth and presented his offer of peace, after the Merovingian had examined Neo's intentions in his meticulous jeweler's way, the Frenchman had summoned the One to him to "return the favor in kind": he had presented Neo with a set of weaponry from his arsenal, a stunningly gorgeous pair of chrome and leather _sai_, the blades wickedly sharpened – not for display or practice, _these_ weapons – and the hilts leather-wrapped in black with embroidered gold braid.

_For the sake of peace,_ he'd said, that infuriating smirk playing over his lips as he sat there, Neo facing him and flanked by his underlings. _For we do have to fight to _keep_ the peace, now, no? And I know you can fight for it. I've seen you use these. Just a favor, eh? Don't use these on any more of my men._ A thoughtful pause, and then the Merv had hoisted an eyebrow and laughed. _Or my furniture._

The sound of his footsteps is nearly inaudible beneath the conversation and laughter and music; he can make his way up above in silent anonymity. His chest loosening a little, just a little – again with the wonders of the subconscious, you never really knew how uncomfortable you were until you weren't – and the cooler air drying the thin film of sweat on his forehead, beneath the swept-back line of his hair. The staircase wound up and up, every single stone and cut a work of art -- even now he admired it, again, no matter how many times he's been up here to think -- at last spreading out into a wide, dark balcony high up, overlooking the room.

Cool, so cool. A step, two, the black cassock's hem swirling around his high boots. He can reach out, now, and put both hands flat on the smooth stone railing; he can move forward, lean over just a little, and look directly down on the party from above. Same place, different perspective, funny how a simple little change in angle can make everything look so different. _There's a lesson there, somewhere. Maybe you should tell them that, the next ones. Tell them that if such a tiny little detail can shift the appearance of everything, then maybe they shouldn't rely so much on details to define their truth._

And Neo is not aware of how he must look, there: dark glasses still concealing his wide darker eyes, the line of his mouth set in that way he so often had these days. The high collar of his coat shading his pale jaw, his neck, the lines of the cassock long and deliberate down to the shine of his calf-high buckled boots, the coat split at his waist to hang loosely at his hips. Residual self-image was often more than a memory of oneself: he had often been surprised at how frequently people new to the truth had asked him this question. It wasn't about the idea of deliberately "looking cool": sometimes, it played itself out as a reflection of the inside. And sometimes, it needed to. Standing there, his black hair still damp with sweat from the overcrowded room, young and age-old with that unending drive, he is unthinkingly and unknowingly fulfilling that part of the cycle: the world's expectations of the One. An outward reflection of his own internal acceptance of his Purpose.

For a moment, he leans forward, looking down at the people he had just been in the thick of: same people, but distant, now. Simply people, rather than faces. Neo crosses his arms on the railing before him and leans his forehead against them… not _tired,_ exactly, but aware in a bone-deep way of just how far there is still left to go.

_All right, okay. Tired. Sue me._

With no precursor or warning, suddenly Neo pauses, like that child in the moment after someone's giggled and yelled _Freeze!_: utterly, absolutely still, like a predator; like the prey.

And he smiles wearily, almost cynically. Not turning, or raising his head. When he speaks it is quiet, dangerous, with the faintest undercurrent of amusement.

The way a rabbit is amused when it runs in a confusing, frantic circle, only to find the wolf superior, already lounging casual in the path to safety.

"I thought I'd had a head start."

The shadows behind him congeal, merge, swirl and seem to shift into a shape that hadn't been there only a moment before; but of course it had been. He had sensed the shift in the tone of the air even without relaxing into that brilliant green vision that was part of his gift, his weight. And even now, he doesn't move or turn: he looks down on the party below, watches them, as a hand slides out of the nearly solid darkness to rest smooth and warm against his right hip; so warm, even through the coat.

A moment, and the other hand is there as well. Something turns over slowly, gently, murderously, in the depths of Neo's stomach and somewhere in his thighs; where a moment before he had been lost in his own thoughts, it takes merely half that time to become lost in sensation. A hand on each hip, then, warm and demanding, and the greater warmth of a body, silk and cotton and cologne just over his right shoulder.

"Mmm, Neo, the day you can out-trick me we'd both better give it up as useless, hmm?" The fingers on his hip, tightening. "Because then we would both be past our prime: my needing your purity of intentions, your needing my cleverness to pursue this endeavor." The breath on his neck and without even thinking about it he rocks his head ever so slightly to the side.

Giving up access.

Giving in.

"Mmm." Noncommittal, and they both know it; this was never about sparkling dinner conversation, or about any truth that cannot be rendered in images and pain. Another time he might have had a more lengthy answer forced from his lips, through coercion in various forms; for now, it is not important.

For now, there is only this.

The hand on him, more insistent, the pressure of the body against him, and Neo takes in a quick -- almost involuntary -- breath that seems too loud, even above the noise of the gathering downstairs. He pulls back a little; starts to pivot on his heel, to turn around, to face the shadow-shape behind him… and the other hand, hot and rough, suddenly grasps him by the nape of the neck, fingers splayed. Pressing. Holding him in place, shattering all movement, all resistance.

"_Non, 'tit chiot," _whispers the Merovingian, in Neo's ear.


	3. Your Beautiful Corruption

**Chapter Three: Your Beautiful Corruption**

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"No. Stay there; face them. Look down on them, from on high. See how they are all… oblivious. _Watch_ them."

A whimper, inaudible, felt only in the vibration of aching bones.

The hands, those _hands,_ reaching around to part the cassock at its point of separation, to grasp its edges and pull them back past Neo's hips.

Fingers, at his waist.

He stays.

Looks down. Doesn't move.

Doesn't turn.

Watches.

"Mmm, can you see them, Neo?" His name, a rare occurrence past those lips. Soft, like a silenced pistol. Like the knife that opens your throat in your sleep, as you dream of Heaven. "All of them, they have all come here seeking power. Power attracts power, yes, but it also attracts those without… and some of them are here for you, no? To see what it is that you see." An arm has snaked around his waist, that maddening hand splayed on his taut and trembling black-clad thigh. Moving, not fumbling, with deliberate and excruciating slowness. "They are here to see what the Savior of the human world might have in store for them, now… just imagine" – a purr, now, more than a spoken word; Neo can _hear_ the satisfaction in it, the keen-edged pleasure inherent in the mock, and this is so very much a part of this – "what they would say if they could see you, now. Right _now_."

Without knowing, without consciously realizing, Neo has been pressed more tightly against the marble railing, his hands – hands that have been extended in battle and in peace, deflected bullets and touched the fallen with tenderness torn out of his own battered heart – helpless with their command not to move, palms-down on the cool stone, his back to the darkness and the man who now hovers over him like a demigod of lust. He swallows as his chest tightens, loosens, and his stomach does a slow, almost nauseating roll; he is trembling, now, and he can't seem to help it. Can't seem to help it, even though he knows damn well that every tremor in his limbs is like a nectar of victory, to him.

To the Merovingian.

Yes.

"And you're so _close_," the voice goes on, unrelenting… as unrelenting as the hands that are now no longer dancing the dance of deliberate hesitation. "So close to them, up here… we are not entirely concealed. Not entirely in shadow…" Neo's helpless, nearly silent moan of understanding. Of humiliation… but he is not bound, he is not incapacitated, he stands there against the railing on the strength of a single command.

_Choice._

Deep down – if not entirely unconscious – and buried, wrenched and perhaps coerced from himself… but even now, the building blocks of his mind could make him aware of his freedom to refuse… if he so chose.

He does not turn.

The hands are at the waistband of his black slacks, moving. Not even exploring, really: they know this territory. They have staked it out, if not extensively, then at least with enough poise and pure _nerve_ to make up for the lack. It does not even take both hands to reach beneath the cassock, to lift up the hem of the black shirt Neo wears beneath it, to slide a pair of long and oh-so-assured fingers between the buttons and slip them open in a whisper like sin on Christmas morning.

"Just think," soft, urgent, but so controlled that it is like a shiver of ice down Neo's neck, that voice in his ear. "We are not entirely in shadow, and there are so _many_ of them… the people you are trying to _save, mon cher, _all of these people and programs, each one of them influential, each one of them _powerful…_ and I watch you…" A flash of heat on heat: heavy yet shockingly delicate hands leaving the buttons undone and reaching to grasp the opened front, brushing Neo in places that make his nerve endings fire off in spiraling sheets of code that read to his fevered mind like the melting music of the dying. "I watch you watching them, waiting for your… for your _chance,_ I see you drive yourself to insanity with this… _love"_ – the word, dripping, but he will not argue, cannot, the hands have taken an inexorable and irrefusable grip on the waistband of his opened slacks and begun to _pull._ Neo is too thin, even within the Matrix -- work and worry and the constant motion of struggle have melted what little excess he had from muscle and bone -- and it takes very little force for the slacks and the simple shorts he wears beneath them to begin to slide down and over his hips.

Not far, of course; that would be unnecessary.

And the Merovingian appreciates nothing if not efficiency.

"…this _love_ for them, this passion that you have that I myself barely understand – no, _look at them!"_ For Neo had tried again, almost against his will, to turn; this time, the hand that forces him back is harsher, more insistent. "And yet… here you are." And the smaller man can _hear_ the smirk this time, feel it like an overlay of a final orchestration in the midst of a symphony. A whisper, now. "Here you are. Within mere _feet_ of all of these people who see you simply as their Savior, as the Anomaly; oh, but he's the _One._" Air, cool and somehow damp, on the back of Neo's legs. The rough caress of cotton, wool, silk. His stomach, rolling over and over, and the painful tightness between his thighs. The hands, stroking. Holding. "And if they were to look up now – right now! – just _imagine_ what they'd see… wouldn't that be a sight, hm? Your hands" – and one of those other roaming hands pauses briefly to caress Neo's, splayed there on the railing, damp with sweat and trembling – "grasping the rail, your head down, your feet spread..." A pleased, self-satisfied, drawn-out sigh of arousal, of contentment with a job well-done.

An expensive shoe squirms its way between Neo's black boots, parting his legs; he lets them be parted with the smallest headshake, the smallest sound of protest. The hand on his back, pressing, leaning him forward ever-so-slightly. The sound of a zipper – a sound that nearly makes him start, makes his eyes widen at how clearly it seems to echo, here in the dark, a brief fleeting thought that that _must_ have been heard, it _must_ have – and a quiet, happy grunting sigh. "They know nothing of this, do they, Neo? _On ne sait rien. _Not as far as you are concerned, anyway… they don't know you are here in the dark, waiting… but they might well. It only takes a moment. How everything changes in a moment! How the mighty have fallen, and if even one of them were to look up at this very moment, they would see you falling with… such… exquisite… grace."

A pause. In that pause, worlds might have ended and begun again from the ashes. "Without a single protest."

A whisper of fabric, a whisper of skin.

The warmth of cloth is replaced in an instant with the dry, throbbing heat of flesh: Neo grinds his teeth and bites his lip, hard, eyes open and excruciatingly aware of the crowds milling just beneath them. One of them _could_ look up. Any time. He suddenly wants desperately to struggle – not necessarily a struggle to _resist_ – or to move, to sinuously twine his shaking body backwards, to end what feels like an endless breathless moment of torment, of waiting, of anticipation. He wants to speak, to cry, to shout, to do something, _anything._ To have something _to_ do. To say.

The silent balcony, spinning into eternity.

The music below, pulsing.

The shockthrill of contact, of hands on his bare skin, that feeling of violation before anything has even been _done,_ the moment in which his pride is nothing but a pile of shattered smoking rubble and he is only this, only this, only this.

His muffled whimper.

_Please_ dies unsaid before it even reaches his lips. This is not something by request, it is not something to be pampered and planned and thought-out.

All of this, happening in less than a minute.

"Mmm, Neo," from just beside his ear. "You give this to me so _willingly,_ don't you?"

And for a moment the world explodes into green and white: code negative, an eruption of sensation, pain and pleasure and Neo thinks – not in words, no, he is far beyond words and coherent thought: it comes more like an image, a painting – that in that instant all skin and muscle and bone have been stripped away, that all that is left is a framework of nerves that register every touch and brush and shock like a gunshot. The initial contact sends a burning trail into the pit of his stomach, down the insides of his thighs, to the tight, screaming pain that is white-hot between his legs. Dangerous, dirty, shameful, exhilarating, empowering, wrong, right, shades of gray and when the stretching that is the part of the Merovingian that he is pushing the man beneath him to take into himself ceases to _be _stretching and slides home so fully that it hits something inside Neo that is pure sensation, agony beyond endurance because it is just too _much, _reasons and options cease to fucking matter at _all._

A gasp, a cry, a groan, bitten back against his lips.

Neo's head rocks back; his eyes squint and like the voice of an omniscient, amused and vengeful god: "_Don't. _Keep them open. I want you to see them seeing _you._"

This is not what Neo has ever had with Trinity: not a desperate celebration of humanity, of life and love and promises made and kept and made again. Not something to be joked about, held up to the light, put on a pedestal and turned this way and that to admire its facets… and it is not his hated, feared, and loved brutal trysts with Smith – his opposite, his negative, the one entity extant in all planes of existence that can fully balance who and what he is, offset the power that he carries with him, with_in_ him, every waking or sleeping moment… it is not that circuit closing, world-shaking and earth-shattering _needing to be,_ not something that he has loathed and feared for years before slowly coming to grips, to terms, with that, his eternal forever nightmare of _But what does that make _me It is not finally defeating his own fear, as he desperately preaches to new redpills, confronting Bane and blood on a cold steel deck with Trin screaming below and his own eyes a smoking mess in his face… it is not, either, sex for the sake of sex.

Except when it is.

When you carry the world on your shoulders, you may not notice how heavy it's getting… but after a while, your shoulders start to bow with the weight of it. When you are held up as a figurehead to two races of people, when your very _existence_ was the legend they passed down for generations that was meant to free them from oppression and death, when if you are gone for more than an hour or two past the time you're expected a twelve-ship search party is immediately dispatched to make sure you're intact… your shoulders start to bow, just a little.

Just a little.

When _everything_ is a battle, a struggle for peace, when you are expected to be both yourself and something _more_ than yourself, when you are dancing as fast as you can in combat boots through a grease-slicked minefield… you start, even in the very back of your constantly-turning mind, to chafe at these constraints. No, they're not pure bondage, perhaps – the choice is, after all, yours to make. Or at least it was, before the people you kept telling how nice the water might be if they'd only shed their fear of the pool and wade in decided all at once to take a dive into the deep end… while still unable to swim.

This makes you automatic lifeguard.

You don't _resent _this role; it is your place, your Purpose, your destiny if you choose to think about it that way. But all the same, the seeds are already sown.

And what you're growing is a desire to take a step down.

Not in truth; not in station; not in duty. But every once in a while, there is someone who knows the way you feel, truly _knows_ it, someone who is just self-serving enough to take advantage of this while being just compassionate enough to do it because you _need_ him to.

When you feel powerless to begin with, being _made_ to feel powerless seems like an insult, an oppressing, a brutal manipulation. But Neo's trouble is not feeling powerless: it is trying to contain within a mostly human shell too _much_ power, like a thin live wire pumped full of sparking, killing juice. Too much juice, and the wire will burn out, or explode; too much juice, and Neo – in his love for them all, his desire and true _need_ for peace, in his newly-awakened mastery of the Matrix and awareness of his own keen connection to the Source – will implode in a shower of pieces.

The Merovingian, is powerful.

Like now, one hand on Neo's back, warm through the coat that still hangs on the smaller man's shoulders. One hand grasping his hip hard enough to hurt, hard enough to bruise, later… not that either of them are even remotely considering those consequences now, while Neo's fingers drag helplessly across the unmarked marble as he is rocked against the railing, his other hip scraping the stone, his black slacks caught between his hips and his knees and his lips pressed together to turn the litany of pleas and moans into an inarticulate, muffled hum.

If asked, neither of them could have told an observer – not that either of them _would _have, if asked – how it had begun. How their interaction had gone from uneasy truce to business relations laced with a thick undercurrent of tension… a tension that Neo had denied as fervently as he'd ever denied anything, for as long as he could remember. _Not the Merovingian,_ he'd said. More than once. More than a dozen times, actually. _No way. I'm not… I wouldn't… no._

But there was no denying that somewhere, deep down, there was both affection and attraction – attraction in both the purest physical sense, and attraction to the power, the _essence,_ that blinding charisma that always seemed to make the hair on Neo's body stand on end whenever the two of them were in close proximity. And, of course, the Merv had known this, sensed it, played on it: a glance here, a word there, a well-placed clever double entendre somewhere else. Was it to test Neo's loyalty? To throw him off guard? To see if he would, when faced by something that so _obviously_ made him uncomfortable, abandon his idea and his quest for peace for the sake of his own comfort?

There was no way of knowing: and Neo never asked. He'd simply smiled, discussed, accepted the gift of weapons with thanks, and soldiered on.

The Sixth Anomaly, fulfilling his Purpose.

There is no gap in the story, only that whirlwind of confusion that so often accompanies a massive paradigm shift. The Merovingian had wanted him. The attraction was there. The Merv, in his infinite wisdom gathered through ages of observation and his own keen cunning, could read Neo like text through a transparent window: the pressure, the need, the edgy ranging restraint like a wild animal tossed into a mile-wide cage: the cage may not always show bars, but the animal knows it's there nevertheless. By instinct.

The two of them were not 'an item'. Neither of them would have allowed it, not at this point… and Smith might have murdered them both. Their joint desire for mutual peace overrode any and all personal needs and compulsions: and something like that would have undermined immediately any credibility the Merovingian's arguments may have held with the human councils. Lousy aspect of human nature_("Ah, see, he's only taking his side because he's _screwing_ him")_ – and one that the Machines knew nothing of, this judging people by their extracurricular pleasures – but an aspect of human nature all the same, and one that had to be taken into account. And at this juncture, the Merovingian had Persephone… and Neo Trinity, and Smith as well.

And neither one of them, right now, craved the 'trappings' of a relationship. That had not been the point of this, when it had begun.

How he came to be here, his head halfway thrown back in pleasure and the delirious thrill of the shame of it, feet above the curious eyes of the Merovingian's guests. By day, they were nothing more than associates, brought together by a world-spanning, endlessly vital cause – sustaining the Matrix, and thus the Merovingian's life, existence, and that of his people, as well; and protecting the human race from itself – who never touched, never interacted socially except with the most polite and considerate of tones. By day Neo was the black-clad emissary of a people, the slightly bewildered and yet unfailingly confident Sixth Anomaly who had once claimed that he'd "handle" a room full of men armed with automatic rifles and ancient weapons of destruction… who had simply stood, when faced with a dozen men with orders to end his life, and beckoned them with a single hand… by day the Merovingian treated him with cool, calculating respect: inviting him to speak, for dinner, for an audience with those of his people he knew might have something to gain from Neo's ultimate intentions.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

But the Merovingian had seen through Neo in an instant, seen _through_ him, and then -- without there seeming to be so much as a changeover reel, in Neo's mind and memory -- there were the nights that he sent one of his underlings with a private invitation to dinner… they would dine, and speak, in public, but when eyes were off them he would close a rough hand around Neo's arm just below the elbow. Cut off all protests before they had even begun… and Neo would allow himself to be taken. To be used. Once or twice, Neo's snark had been cut off with a clipped, well-timed backhand across his clean-shaven cheek… and at the instant of contact, something hot and hard would melt inside his chest, his stomach, something evil and foul-smelling would break open and pour itself out into his veins and then flush out of him in sweat, in tears, in fluids spilled across tight black fabric, silk sheets. Flesh.

Anyone seeing this, or reading it described, might think that there was something _wrong_ with this: that the Merv was somehow taking advantage of the One, abusing him, using him simply as an expendable plaything, to be tossed away like a spent prophylactic at the end of the night.

Those who believe that will never _understand._

Using someone who desires nothing more passionately than to be used by you is a demonstration of affection… of love.

And if you're _good_ at it… well.

Both of them were innately pleased by this unseen dynamic: Neo because of its brutal opposition to his everyday existence, the Merovingian because he took delight in _Neo's_ delight in it, and, of course, the opportunity to "despoil" the One is something not to be taken lightly. And so, the Merv's _petit chiot:_ a lapdog that could bite, and bite hard, at any moment. Neo enjoyed the hot, close-up rebellion of it… being summoned by a word, a look, a nod, summoned to a back room or a bedroom or a dining room at the other man's faintest whim. Once or twice he'd slept in one of the luxurious beds hidden upstairs in the chateau, when his work or their encounter had left him drained and only crawling between the sheets when the sky was light with day… once he woke to find his coat pressed and his shoes cleaned, and once, dozing in a bathtub that was almost as big as any apartment Thomas Anderson had ever had in his life, he had been startled by one of the house servants, who came in with a silver bucket, a tray… and a razor. Neo had thought that this had simply been an offer of a razor to shave his face, digital stubble or no. How wrong he had been. _Monsieur's orders,_ the poor lackey had told him. _He… eh… thought you might appreciate a little grooming. He told me to tell you that _he_ would appreciate it…_

He never woke to find the Merovingian beside him, and when he dressed and left – on the rare occasions that he did so by daylight – Himself was more often than not nowhere to be found.

Neo never looked. If he wanted to be found, it was an easy task to be.

Once, he'd shed the cassock, a little code manipulation, and he'd found himself a sleek, short leather jacket… and driven Merv's car through the midnight streets, with Monsieur himself luxuriating amusedly in the back seat, describing lazy directions… while(unbeknownst to Neo at that time) a great faction of his crew was scrambling in a panic: _Where's Neo? Have you seen him? Do you know where he is? He just… vanished!_

Once – and only once, both Neo and the former "plugged in" version of himself knew how to learn _those_ lessons pretty damn quick – he'd been frustrated about something, angry at the slow progress of his mission, fuming and seething and generally wired with an inarticulate rage, and he'd whined a little too much, snapped when he shouldn't have, protested something that by their own unspoken pact, he didn't have the right to protest. In a bottom drawer of one of the carved wooden chests in one of the master bedrooms, there was a dark green, wickedly leather riding crop. Neo's _Oh hell _no,_ I don't _think_ so _ wide eyes had vanished into something else entirely after the first four or five welts.

He'd stopped whining_ real_ fast… and secretly, was thankful.

Choice.

Freedom.

_Weight._

And one of the things Neo loved utterly and secretly about this was the contradiction in terms, so utter and complete that it made his nerves tingle: _the One,_ this symbol of power and freedom, this "legendary" Sixth Anomaly who was known on sight, listed on the rolls of dozens of governments as a dangerous and deadly terrorist, a cult leader who knew no bounds and would stop at nothing to "subvert the System" …this man, this person, this _entity_… was, by night and whim and command and _his own choice,_ more or less the Merovingian's personal call-boy. When he was under those hands, he was not "the One', he was not this über-ultimate _thing…_ and yet, still… he _was._ The delirious subjugation of it, the debasing of this, this image, aroused and vindicated him beyond anything he ever might have imagined, before or after the end of the world. It wasn't being loved _for_ being the One, and it wasn't letting _go_ of that place, that responsibility. Instead, it was… what _was_ it, really? There were no words. Only the freedom of it, summed up sometimes in Neo's own imaginings of what the Merv would say to someone: "_Oh, yes, Neo. Well. I call him when I like: he's my…" _ Insert knowing smile here, and whichever graphic word you choose: Neo had one or two that he usually filled in those blanks with.


	4. The Dance

**Chapter Four(Final Chapter): The Dance**

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Or summed up in him being shown off, demonstrated, fucked with silent abandon here on the balcony in the breathing dark, his hands scratching at marble that held no purchase for him, his knees bent and his back sweating with the effort of remaining on his feet: the Merovingian was not powerful only in name. Neo's lips press together, and then he releases them and takes the bottom one between his grinding teeth only to let go two seconds later because he has to give voice to that groan, _has_ to, and his sound provokes a gentle laugh from over his shoulder… the hand tightens on his hip, the other moving down to hold his other side, groomed fingernails digging into naked pale flesh and Neo flexes his _feet,_ rising up as if he might propel himself over the railing itself in his desperate passion. Oh, but it felt so _good…_

Another soft laugh. "Don't look now, _chiot,_" and Neo knows what is coming before the words are spoken and bites back another moan, "But it seems as if your enthusiasm is beginning to attract some attention." And this is what he wanted, Neo knew: part of the dance that they shared, part of breaking Neo down to rebuild him stronger, faster, better, in the service of peace.

He can't help _but_ look, and the Merovingian is right, of course: when it comes to the nature of the people in his circle, he is almost _always_ right. Several well-dressed people – _Exiles,_ is Neo's fleeting sweaty thought, _I know them, they're part of the Reconstruction Project, we set up a safehouse for—_have paused in their conversation to squint up into the darkness, at the balcony. _Oh, God, oh fuck, if they keep staring like that they'll have everyone—_

And this is of course the point, as always: _Look at the One, bent over the railing upstairs. Biting his lips and groaning with his sweaty hair stuck to his forehead, _look_ at the state of him, dirty little…_

The thought – formed or unformed, conscious or purely subconscious – never reaches completion. The people below may not even really be _looking: _ regardless of the Merovingian's wordplay, the balcony _is_ dark, and high above the rest. But Neo is not aware of any of this now, not anymore. The words – and actions – have served their purpose

_(just like everything else, just like all of us)_

and he grinds his teeth, his fingers grabbing for handholds in the marble as he pushes _backward,_ driving himself onto the invading, filling flesh, rocking his hips forward and the litany is constant, now, a keening from between his teeth that he cannot adequately control, the pulling and stroking and _sliding_ and that delirious shock of impact every time the man behind him pushes forward against him, into him, through him. He will wear his fingernails raw on the railing; but until hours later, he will not even notice if he does. _Take me, use me, make me yours, make me nothing, make me_ this.

Sometimes he says these things out loud: things he would never repeat even on his deathbed, things his mind represses and buries as soon as their echoes have faded from his ears.

His shirt and coat are sticking to him with sweat, his slacks in a jumble around his legs, his knees spread and his head down, the cords in his neck standing out with effort and sensation. And even as he struggles, pushes back, writhes and groans and cries out, it only seems like a maelstrom to him: they are _careful,_ these two, and screaming-screwing-bashing-banging _would_ attract more attention to the balcony than either one of them want.

It is a demonstration of the Merovingian's true _affection_ for Neo that despite his clear awareness of the other man's need, he is _not_ out to deliberately and gratuitously debase the One. He is happy and amused and pleased to fulfill this function, to have this pleasure, this shared exultation in the flesh… but they both walk a thin line, and he would no sooner truly _hurt_ Neo, push him further than he could or needs to go, than he would cut off his own relevant limbs.

Most people would miss that truth.

And like caged animals co-existing, they both always know that that possibility _exists:_ loyal or not, on the same side or not, each has his own _personal _loyalties that cannot be forsaken.

If the Merovingian ever gleefully hurt or killed someone Neo loved, he'd swear vengeance.

If Neo ever hurt or killed someone close to the Merovingian, betrayed him like every other iteration's Anomaly has betrayed him, the Merv would have no choice but to take drastic action.

And it is partly this awareness that drives them both.

To rise above.

Higher thought is a wonderful thing, indeed… but there _is_ no higher thought in Neo's mind here in the dark, the cool, the heat of that driving crying screaming agony of ecstasy that, as always, threatens to overwhelm him. He wants to speak, to beg, to say _Stop_ or _Don't_ or _God, please, right there_ – but he doesn't need to. And although he'd thought he'd learned better by now, he opens his mouth to say _something,_ anyway… which results in his voicing a resounding half-scream, half-gasp instead as the hands on his shoulders re-adjust their grip and that _spot,_ oh_ God,_ the pounding _inside_ and it's so excruciatingly _slow,_ too slow, slow and deep and hard and _expert,_ and Neo leans over his own arms on the railing and sinks his teeth into his wrist, just hard enough to stifle his own helpless moans.

Until a hand twines itself into his hair and pulls – he gasps out loud as this sends another shock through his gut to his groin and his hips twitch forward seemingly without his help or consent.

"Don't muffle it, hm? It's too good to miss."

The arm around his waist, the hand in his hair, the flesh against his back and that _sound,_ the stretching of muscle and skin and nerves, and something rises up from his thighs to his stomach and his chest and he sobs out something, an incoherent word, a noise.

"…please…"

Nearly silent, even as it is wrenched so hard from his aching throat that it feels as if it must bring blood with it, a splintered part of his soul, _something._ His eyes are closed now, shut tight against the onslaught, it is so far beyond his ability to prevent. A gasp, a sound, his rapid desperate breathing. He has learned well, though, these lessons: his hand is still locked onto the marble railing in a death-grip, but if he doesn't do _something,_ his body will simply implode.

Sometimes he wonders if that might not even be a relief.

"…please…" Again. "…I need… can I… will you…" A helpless gesture with his right hand, just the smallest of movements: _Please, let me, **please**… this is killing me. I'm there, I'm already there, I can't take any more…_

And Neo can hear Merv smile, even through his quickened breathing.

"Do it, _chiot._ _Pute._ Go ahead. Let me see you." A forever pause, and then the breathless whisper: "Let _them_ see you."

Neo groans, softly.

"Do it _now._"

And the command is as inexorable, as unstoppable, as a torrent, a flood, a natural disaster: Neo most likely could not have refused even if he hadn't been half-insane with need. In a moment he has unclenched his screaming hand, muscles locked from his stone-shattering grip on it, and twisted his sweating hips a fraction to the right.

The driving, screaming _pressure;_ the hands now gripping one shoulder, one hip, fingers pressing, digging, burning, _hurting,_ and his own silent litany of consent… hips, heavy and hard and hot, rocking into him, that too-slow poundingdrivingthrustingseeking _there,_ his own slick fingers reaching beneath the crumpled hem of the pulled-back cassock, words in three languages, pleas and entreaties and promises – none of which Neo would _ever_ repeat by the light of day – and accusations, epithets… and everything fades out, no code-vision, no sight, no seeking curious drunken crowd below, no balcony beneath his feet, no dark and sweat and _anything…_ just that sudden agony in his thighs, the upsurge that is shattering in its power, that feeling like something is going to rupture, _must_ break, now, inside, the _pain_ inside him and inside his skin, as well, the pain in his battered hips, the song of nerves thrummed like a violin by a panther, and _Oh God oh no oh please God oh God,_ and he hears distantly from beside his ear the gasp, the low groaning moan of pleasure, of satisfaction, and the spasm against him is where everything explodes into red and blue

_(how ironic)_

after-images behind his eyes, and this time when he bends his head and locks his teeth in his wrist, tasting skin and cloth and sweat, Merv does not stop him.

The balcony railing, beneath his hand, crumbled in the shape of his palm to jagged fragments and dust.

The Matrix. Bending reality.

He might have expected it, in his _extremis._

Breathe.

Slowly, now. In and out.

Breathe.

_Christ, I'm a mess._

They pull apart – Neo has nothing but a soft resigned moan of small pain, for this – and Neo does not turn, even now. Instead he takes in a deep breath – _deeper now, hold it,_ his chest and throat are sore -- and methodically puts everything back into its place: the handkerchief from his pocket. Pull up the shorts, pull up the slacks, shake out the crease_(aren't I supposed to be able to do this with my mind? That would save a whole hell of a lot of time)_, draw them up over his aching hips. Button. Fasten. Fix the bottom button on his black shirt, straighten it, tuck it in. Swing the cassock back over his hips, smooth its hem, work out the sleek lines of fabric until the split is re-aligned and the material swirls across his boot tops.

He does not rush. Beside him, still, he can sense the presence of the Merovingian; but if he had somewhere to be, he'd be there. Neo honestly had not expected him to remain on the balcony even this long… but then again, the Merv has a tendency toward surprising him. Neo takes his time, meticulous and careful, even straightening his collar, smoothing back his sweaty hair… and re-settling his dark glasses on his face, effectively blocking out all expressions but that one, neutral cool.

There will be no hot bath in an upstairs Jacuzzi for him tonight: no matter how sore and tired Neo may be, they both know that that isn't going to happen. Too many people have seen the Anomaly here; too many people – even one person may be too many, in the end – have seen the Merovingian go in search of him. He will not be the pampered house-pet tonight, the antithesis of "the One": what he _has_ been is more than enough in that regard, and will have to remain that way for now. But he is washed-out, _cleaned_ out, he has been galvanized into the best and sharpest of himself. Just as he had stood before the Merovingian's own army of thugs bare-handed before he'd fully understood the meaning of peace, now he will stand against the army of fear, with the same dry confidence.

This, is the gift the Merv has given him tonight.

In return, Neo gives of himself what he can: his devotion, his dedication, his loyalty to the breaking of the chains forged by every iteration before him.

And, sometimes, something more.

"I'll have those specifications for you by tomorrow evening," comes the cool, dry, cultured voice: finally, the Merovingian speaks… and you wouldn't know from hearing him that his own sweat and various fluids are still drying against Neo's skin. Their first, unbreakable, unspoken rule is that they _never_ mix business with Neo's role as consort; this carries with it too many risks, the least of which may be the damage it might do _to_ the fragile ecosystem of their interaction. This houseboy cannot save the world; and the One is not the type to submit while pleading for indignities. But now, with Merv speaking in a carrying voice, Neo understands – there is still a houseful of guests, downstairs, and again: the dance.

The game.

He nods, his back still turned, gazing down over the people below him. "I just need the numbers. We can't move ahead any further until I have them."

A flex of his sore shoulders; not enough for anyone to notice anything at all.

"Very well then." The smile, in the words. "You'll be… 'jacked in', yes? I'll have one of my people find you. You know I'm good for my word."

Neo smiles to himself, his expression carefully concealed behind the glasses. And it's not even a full smile, really: it is more of a world-weary, amused curl of the lips, a head tilt. _Every step closer is a step toward the end, _he opens his mouth to murmur. _We'll get there. Nothing matters more to me than that._

But when he at last turns to face the darkness beyond the banister, he is facing only empty space.

No presence; no man.

Neo is alone, now, on the balcony.

_"Karma is a word. Like "love". A way of saying 'what I am here to do.' I do not resent my karma - I'm grateful for it."_

"_What do you want?"_

"_Peace."_

A tiny little headshake. And then Neo lifts one shoulder in a shrug – _hmm_ – and raises his right hand, dusting off bits of plaster and a little bit of blood against the black of his coat. His boots echo on the marble stairs, but it is not the front doors toward which he moves: it is the garage, and the motorcycle he uses when he is trying to stay slightly more_ incognito _than flying allows him. Toward the cold night air; the war; the revolution.

It is not forever; it is not now. It exists only within itself.

Like real peace---

Sometimes, worth everything.

END


End file.
